Thursday, August 4, 2016

Like most of us, I am sometimes guilty of taking the ability to ride a motorcycle anywhere, whenever I want, a bit for granted. Today, on a local news site I read the story of Zenith Irfan, a 21 year old Pakistani woman riding a 125cc motorcycle alone, throughout Pakistan. I encourage you to read the story yourself here

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

We are experiencing the worst winter for motorcycling since I bought my bike. Day after day a look out the window confirms the worst - wind and rain - again. It was a nice change this morning to open the curtains to be greeted by a clear and relatively still day. An opportunity to combine two pleasures, a motorbike ride and an opportunity to fly the Phantom IV. After a bit of fiddling around I figured out how to mount the Phantom in its carry case on to the Beemer so that it was secure and I could still get on it. I had already mounted it on the Honda but then found that the Honda had a flat battery - a result of the lack of use. Finally I was on my way bound for Glenmaggie Weir, which I featured in my previous post but was only able to photograph from a distance. Now, with the Phantom, I was hoping to fly up close and personal and get a great view. Flying the drone over water is quite a scary proposition and I had a practice run a few days ago over another dam called the Cowarr Weir. That flight was on a still and sunny day and I was very happy with the resulting video.

Here is the Cowarr Weir flight.

Encouraged by the success of this flight I felt reasonably confident to undertake a flight over the Glenmaggie dam structure which is much bigger and much more risky. When I arrived at Glenmaggie it was quite windy and there was a bus full of schoolchildren running around, and so I decided to wait awhile. Soon the children had departed and the wind died down a bit so it was time to launch.
Here's the video.

Due to the still relatively strong winds I was quite happy to make this a short flight and felt quite relieved when the little Phantom landed at my feet ready to resume its place on the BMW.
Altogether a successful day out.